You arrived at this page by selecting:Tie up those loose ends before your remarry (Legal Eye 17/09/09)
If you're interested in re-marrying you may want to read this before you do. Mrs Brook (name changed for confidentiality reasons) got divorced. It was all as amicable as these things can be and she even let Mr Brook divorce her rather than the other way round. She thought it was all his fault, but he thought otherwise and to save a fuss she let him have it his way. Mrs Brook then decided to go off and get remarried before the split of the house and other assets was done, and was proving a touch on the fractious side.
This can happen - resentment about the reasons for the divorce comes out in arguments about money and the like. So, for example, as soon as they agree they are going to have half the sofa each they start arguing about who should get the left or right half or whether it should be cut length ways. It goes on and on sometimes.
Eventually Mrs Brook decided since they could not agree she would take the issue to court to get a judge to decide how to split things. But unfortunately she couldn't, because she had remarried. The law says once you are remarried you cannot claim any sort of brass from your former spouse. You have a new one to claim from instead. So Mrs Brook lost out, because of her rush to get down the aisle again.
This problem is easily avoided as there are some magic words that you can put down on paper and file in the court office to keep your right to claim after you remarry. But you have to file it before you remarry, it is too late afterwards. Not many people know that. Some lawyers have even been known to miss it. But once its missed there is nothing you can do to retrieve the situation after you remarry.
It's unfair because it tends in practice to only affect the people being divorced, not the ones doing the divorcing. This is because when you apply for a divorce you need to file paperwork at court anyway. These magic words are so straightforward that it is almost invariably included in this paperwork as a matter of course just in case it is needed. But if you are the one on the receiving end of the divorce papers there is not much for you to do paperwork wise; so it is much easier just to overlook the point, like Mrs Brook did.
If Mrs Brook had had a solicitor doing her divorce for her she could have complained. But she decided to do it herself and as much as I like to see people having a go, it does have its pitfalls as her case illustrates.
To me it is daft that serious rights can be lost by a simple paperwork slip. The system should sort this out so as to avoid injustice to the likes of Mrs Brook.
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